Leo Laporte and his TWIT crew are broadcasting live and archiving web-based broadcasts from the Consumer Electronics Convention in Las Vegas this week. There is a lot about this that intrigues me.

First is the web-based broadcasting, both live and archived. So far I have only viewed the archived presentations and the quality is pretty amazing. It is only a sign of things to come in customized broadcasting. When you see things like this it is hard to envision how network TV will survive. The fragmentation and specialization of our media only continues to expand. Perhaps there will always be a place for mass-interest broadcasting, but it seems like the trend is certainly going against this. Few events can bring together our country for mass viewing; sports, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars.

The technology at CES is also intriguing. FloTV is a branch of QualComm and they have installed a 700mhz network in the top 100 metro areas in the U.S. The network can broadcast live TV such as ESPN and ABC to there own customized hardware, but there are plans to develop an attachment for the iPhone to receive and display the video feed.

There was also a 3D laptop on display from Lenovo. The future of gaming is surely going to move in this direction. Lenovo also presented a laptop with detachable screen that became a tablet running Linux. The laptop runs Windows 7 when in full laptop mode. Web-based broadcasting, new networks for receiving media, and tablets/laptop hybrids seem to be moving our technology forward. It will be an interesting decade.

Most importantly, exposure to this technology has spurred some new ideas that I have for photographic education. I hope to announce this new venture in the coming months so please stay tuned. Now to work on this new endeavor...